This is a not-so-brief history of Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo as written by current Webmaster "Cloud Strife". The thoughts and recollections written herein are of my own and do not directly represent the thoughts or beliefs of the Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo site, it's Affiliates, or any representative of the Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo staff. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed living it out and writing it down for our newer members to see where it all came from. I'm not claiming the information contained on this page to be accurate, however it is what I recall, and I encourage older FFCC members to correct me where I am wrong, should they find any discrepancies.

In 2003, Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo was started in it's first incarnation by a man known as "FF Legend." He recruited many of the members to the site via Private Messaging and Word of Mouth Advertisement on other forums. One of the first people he recruited was myself, known then as "DarkAuron" but I later changed to "Cloud Strife" which I still go by (and yes, this is the last and final time I'm reverting back to it, older members will understand why the Cloud Strife name holds significant importance to myself and the site and I apologize to those I may confuse when I've switched so many times...). After a short period many more people joined the Crystal Cosmo Staff. These people include our very own Ethereal (known then as "Dark Angel"), Yuna (known then as "Aya Brea"), Faith (she also went by this name, back then). Other Moderators who stuck around include Elf and Iskra (known then as "Lord Seifer"). Other administrators/moderators who have since left us are C-Riz, Dark Kimahri, Yuffie, Black Vivi, Tidus, Blue, Pulsar, Stellice and several others.
Please note, if you were a former FFCC mod (or you know of a former mod), that is not listed here please feel free to drop me a PM. All former FFCC Staff Members require a mention as they helped build the site time and time again.

Yeah... we had a lot of Moderators back then... you could say we would give Mod Status out to any of our friends. But, in my opinion, every single one played a role in building FFCC into the site it was, and they all still have a small influence on how I run the site now. I look back at all the good things that we have done, and try to mimic that to the best I can. I, also, look back and look at all the bad stuff we've done, and try to avoid the same mistakes.

Anyway, back then FFCC was (and still is, technically) a baby compared to the bigger Final Fantasy sites out there. We had no content, and very few members (thinking back I believe our highest amount of members at one time was around 300). We have had memorable moments including the big "Sexual Orientation" and "Religious Belief" debates, which eventually made it into the Debate Forum description later on down the road. Then there was also the "Evil Bad Girls Cruise RP" I believe it was called, where the members of the club Evil Bad Girls (which still exists) would take along a Date on a Cruise (I was in this, as Yuffie's date [who was also my girlfriend, at the time]). We also had many arguments over so many things I can't even remember what most of them were about, but I'm sure most of them had to do with either myself or FF Legend saying, or doing, something idiotic. Which we probably did 75% of the time.

Jeez, this is turning into a memoir rather than an "History" isn't it? Moving on...

In it's first incarnation FFCC was hosted for free by Square Ultima (I'm not sure if the site exists anymore, though it should seeing as it was pretty popular). Most of it's members came from other big FF boards from the result of FF Legend's Spam PMs (which he actually got banned for at The Final Fantasy). Eventually, however, we became this kind of group of friends with an unbreakable bond... but that would change (suspense)...

After a while the FFCC site went completely down after SU (Square Ultima) got shut down (I think it was from using an illegal copy of vBulletin, or some crap like that...). Which we then moved to a new host (FF Armageddon or something) and had to restart our forums, from scratch. Everyone had to re-register, everything had to be reposted, it sucked. However this event didn't stop. After being hosted on FFA for a while, we moved BACK to SU after it cleared it's issues. And yet again, we had to re-do EVERYTHING to get back where we were. This was when FFCC was at it's best though, because members and staff alike were able to attain thousands of posts, per person, and everything was going great. We started to finally get content up, and we were able to get more members. This led to my promotion from Super Moderator to Administrator. After a time, C-Riz was promoted to Administrator as well.

Then, the crap started hitting the fan. We lost the forum, Tens of Thousands of posts were lost. I cannot remember what actually had happened at that time, but we decided to move away from SU. This is when we met a person by the name of "Stellice." Stellice decided to host us on his website, called CrystalTerra, so we could properly manage our forum and we had direct contact with the person who hosted us in the event of an outage. This is also the time we switched from the Free Forum Software Burning Board to the Commercial (meaning it wasn't free) Forum Software vBulletin (this is an important detail!!!).

Things started picking up again, we nabbed some new members, some old members left, but we were growing back again. I started a side project, called The Glass Prison (note this name, it'll come up again later), that I would run while also maintaining an Administrator position at FFCC.

For a while the site ran good, until one day FF Legend actually MADE the forums crash so we would have to restart again. He did this so that a few members who often criticized him would give up and leave. During this time C-Riz had left the staff (I believe) which eventually led to Tidus and Black Vivi being promoted to Administrators. FF Legend, however, started acting erratically...

After myself and Tidus caught wind of the intentional crashing of the board and reviewing his current actions, we (along with other staff members) decided it would best if FF Legend was removed from his Administrator position. I still remember it to this day. Once we decided to finally go with it, I did the actual De-Admining. He then started a thread about it, asking why he was no longer an administrator and I replied with, and I quote, "Abuse of your Administrative Powers." (I remember this line).

Soon after that, he had finally left. And it was Myself, Tidus, and Black Vivi at the helm. Things ran smooth after the FF Legend ordeal, until one day we received an email from Jelsoft (the makers of vBulletin).

Our copy of vBulletin was an illegal pirated version, we had not paid for it and they found us. We had a week to figure out what to do with the board, or else we would be facing possible legal issues. That's when a man named "KidWu" came into play. He stepped forward and bought us a license so that we would not have to close down, nor would we face any legal complications. We were legally allowed to run the vBulletin software. The man was a savior, or so we thought. (Another important detail, remember it).

I'm a bit confused about the following, I'm not sure what had happened, nor am I sure of the order it happened in, so bear with me and again, old FFCCers correct me where I am wrong.

There was a gigantic argument (a.k.a. the "Stupid Foreigners" fight, which I still regret, to this day, having said what I said back then and I apologize to every single person I offended). This fight led to me leaving the FFCC team to devote full attention to The Glass Prison (I hope you remembered it. ^_~)

After a while I was somehow back on the FFCC Staff as an Administrator. The current staff then realized that FFCC and TGP were basically the same, except for the fact that TGP was geared at more than just the Final Fantasy series. The forum members were pretty much the same, and so was the staff. It was eventually decided that merging the two forums was best. It was then that FFCC would see it's final closing.
This is where I'm confused... help here would be appreciated.

The merge was completed, FFCC and TGP (sister sites, up until then) were now one, and things proceeded onward, with me at the helm. I began changing TGP's focus, and instead of it being just a Gaming site, it became much, much more. In addition to Gaming, it also housed sections (or "Facets" as I called them) for Poetry, Fan Art, Fan Fiction, Roleplaying, Websites, the whole nine yards. TGP was chugging along, but still something was wrong. We were still hosted for free on a subdomain of the CrystalTerra website. With TGP growing and more content being added to each Facet (not much, mind you, mainly what I shoved in there) it became evident that we needed a full domain name (basically a .com address, for those not so internet savvy). As he did before, KidWu stepped up to the plate and offered to pay for the domain name and hosting.

And yet again, we moved. However, this time I actually knew what I was doing and I was fully able to move the forums and website, while keeping the whole thing intact. We didn't lose anything (of value). The TGP site continued growing, and updates were constantly made to both the website and forums (anyone remember my ugly ass Green and Black theme? ^__^)

Then, something very personal hit home to me. My parents ended up in serious debt and I lost internet access. I left the TGP site in the hands of Terra-Omega, who was my Co-Admin at the time.

Since I left, I have no recollection of what went down. I have, however, heard stories. Apparently, KidWu went absolutely insane and starting banning people who he didn't like. He felt he had the right to do so because he owned the board. And, to be honest, I'm not going to dispute that. Of course I don't advocate what he did, but according to the default vBulletin End User License Agreement, he was within his full right to remove anything from that board as he pleased.

But that's no excuse for being an idiot, and I do not blame the TGP staff for dropping him. But they hit a snag. With KidWu gone there was no one to pay for the vBulletin License, and no one to pay for the Domain and Hosting. But they pushed on and eventually they made out alright with a new domain (www.theglassprison.com) as well as a brand spankin' new vBulletin License, courtesy of Nacho.

And again, I had no idea this all went down, as I had been absent.

Upon my (semi) return to the Online world I saw that everything had changed. The entire TGP staff was switched around, the board was reset, the website I built was gone. Most of this happened when they had to switch from their old domain to the new one. I didn't think too much of it, at the time.

Staff came and went, members came and left. The site had changed almost entirely after I left.

Once I fully returned I realized a predicament. I couldn't just "come back" to TGP. I was no longer the Head Administrator and I didn't have as much freedom as I did before I left. I couldn't just go and change anything without getting approval for it. Then I tried to ask for the site back. I had talked to Yuna about how much I missed running that site, it was my pride and joy before I lost my internet, and I wanted to get back into it. I didn't offer anything in return, nor did I propose any plans (though I did have them) as to what I was going to do. Of course I was turned down, and that caused me to leave TGP.

I don't know what happened after I left, I began focusing on my Web Programming career and rarely visited the site at this point, if someone could clue me in, that'd be great.

About a year has passed now, and I lose my internet for the second time. Upon returning I start talking to Yuna again. Apparently, her and Ethereal had pretty much given up on TGP, and were looking for somewhere new to post at. Then I got the most brilliant idea.

I worked it out before pitching it to them, and once I knew what I was going to do I updated them as to my intentions. I would restart FFCC, and they would be right there with me at the helm. So we could have a gaming related forum to post at, and a place where we could hopefully re-attach old friendships and start new ones.

And this is where we are today, FFCC is reaching it's 20,000th post, we're hitting roughly 2,000 new posts a month and things are updated constantly.

TGP is also re-building, and hopefully that synergistic feel can be re-built between the two sites.

I know the two sites have their differences (in both site topic and userbase) but years ago they were two great websites that were able to co-exist. I hope that, one day, the relationship between Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo and The Glass Prison can finally be put back into place.

Thanks for reading this lengthy tale, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did looking back and writing it.

Best Regards,
Ryan Ashbrook,
Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo Webmaster